stars
by GlimmerIcewood
Summary: for the first time in years, he meets Tigerstar's eyes. —the last hope / ending au (two-shot)
1. the deathbringers

everything that has a start has a finish line,  
do you ever sit and marvel at the stars in the sky?  
— wake me up; the red jumpsuit apparatus

* * *

"Isn't it beautiful, Darkstripe?"

The ThunderClan clearing, once alive and bustling, the mews of excited kits ringing off the stone walls, was eerily silent. It seems even the birds had fled the sudden explosion of noise, and all that could be heard was the barest whisper of the wind against fur. Bodies lay strewn across the once peaceful hollow, Brambleclaw's dark brown tabby fur in clumps across the warriors den, amber eyes staring sightlessly across the sky. Cloudtail's body lay not far away, his once white fur dyed an astonishing scarlet, bright in the darkness. And what had to be the most haunting; Lilykit and Seedkit lay in a crumpled heap just outside the nursery, fur so ragged and bloody it was hard to distinguish one from the other.

"Y-Yes, Tigerstar. Victory is always beautiful," Darkstripe mewed shakily, eyes wide with horror as he saw what damage the Place of No Stars had wrought on his Clanmates. He was a mere shadow next to the formidable leader at his side.

"They're not your Clanmates anymore, Darkstripe. Stop snivelling like a coward. We need to ensure that the other three Clans have been destroyed as well," Tigerstar's voice was harsh, unforgiving. Without warning he leapt down from his perch next to Firestar's den, or at least what was left of it. Tigerstar had thrown Firestar's body off the rocks himself and now he lay in a twisted, mangled mess on the ground below, neck twisted at what looked like an unbearable angle. He probably hadn't even had time to feel himself die before he was in StarClan for the last time.

A sudden screech ran out from the forest and a broad-shouldered form struggled through the entrance to the camp, thorns catching at his dark pelt. In his jaws, yet still alive with fight, a lean silver-furred shape struggled, shrieking defiance. Behind the tom other warriors streamed into camp, Mapleshade's ragged tortoiseshell form at their head.

"The Clans are dead, Tigerstar. The Dark Forest has won."

Triumphant caterwauls rang out across the clearing, the cries of the Dark Forest cats the only sound to be heard for a few brief moments.

"Hawkfrost and myself smashed RiverClan to pieces. He took all of Mistystar's lives himself. Brokenstar led Silverhawk and Clawface into the heart of ShadowClan's camp. With Breezepelt's help, Thistleclaw and Antpelt were able to successfully destroy WindClan. And it seems you did quite the number here, Tigerstar," Mapleshade continued, the smirk on her face growing wider as her eyes landed on Firestar's broken body, Sandstorm and Graystripe lying mangled on each of his sides. This time it was her leading the triumphant call. Tigerstar remained silent, watching the now un-moving form still held in Hawkfrost's jaws.

"It seems that my son has brought us one last gift."

Every eye turned to Hawkfrost, to the wide-eyed cat in his jaws, her blue eyes staring with horror around the camp. Hawkfrost opened his jaws, allowing the cat to fall to the ground. She made no move to escape.

"How does it feel, Ivypool? You betrayed us, and your Clan died for it," Hawkfrost snarled, fangs bared as he advanced toward her. He halted, glancing up as Tigerstar flicked his tail, ordering him to stop.

"Darkstripe, kill her."

Darkstripe's yellow eyes widened, his limbs beginning to shake. Tigerstar and the others had murdered everyone in this camp, not him. He had cowered behind the fighting; he couldn't kill his Clanmates, couldn't kill those who had once been fighting by his side.

_They're not your Clanmates anymore, Darkstripe._

With Tigerstar's words ringing in his ears, he stepped forward, coming closer to where Ivypool lay hunched over on the ground. Her blue eyes, so dark with the moon hidden - StarClan was already dying, it seemed - followed him as he approached. With no warning but a blood-curdling howl she launched herself at him, crashing into his lean form at the shoulders. He stumbled backwards, ending up on his back with her claws stabbing at him from above.

She was injured, and already weakening, it wasn't hard to see. But that light in her eyes, even in the darkness of the night, shone brightly with all of the fury of StarClan; with all of the dying stars in the sky.

With his back legs he pushed straight into her underbelly, sending her flying across the clearing. When she finally got her paws back under her she was bleeding badly, leaning heavily on her right side and not making a move towards him. This time it was him who made the first move, sending them both into the remnants of what had to be the elders den. She wasn't fighting anymore it seemed, but simply staring back at him, watching and waiting for her own death.

He lifted his head, glancing up at Tigerstar, who had resumed his position on the Highledge. Like Ivypool, he was staring, his amber eyes seeming to burn a hole straight through his pelt. Everyone was looking at him, waiting for him to finish it.

Looking back down at Ivypool, he couldn't help but meet her eyes.

"I was going to say that that you should at least look me in the eye if you were going to kill me, so that you can remember it for every day that you live out from here. But you're already dead, aren't you?"

He didn't hesitate when she said it, he dove down, wrapping his jaws around her throat. He didn't let go and felt the warm gush of her blood flow into his mouth, his muzzle stained crimson. She gave one last sickening gurgle and went limp beneath him, her head slumping to one side, blood pooling beneath the remnants of her neck. Slowly, he released her, taking a few shaky steps back from her body.

The camp was silent with this death, no one daring to make a move or cheer once again at their victory. Tigerstar simply stood, glancing around the clearing.

"Tonight, we defeated the Clans. Tomorrow, StarClan will fall to us."

Everyone stared up at him, and Darkstripe looked to the sky. The clouds were continuing to wisp their away across the darkness, blotting out the light of the moon and making it almost impossible to see the stars. There was one, brighter than the others that caught his attention. He watched as yet another cloud claimed it, swallowing it, never to be seen again.

_The stars will bleed tonight and I'm sorry._

_I'm so sorry._

* * *

Written as an alternate ending to The Last Hope, because it disappointed me and I'm a horrible person.

Reviews are love.

- Rowan


	2. the betrayers

as we fade in the dark,

just remember you will always burn as bright.

— the light behind your eyes; mcr

* * *

It was running thick between his paws, congealed in between the fur of them and his claws. He frantically dips them into the stream again, running calm with ice cold water, pristine and blue only to be tinged with the faint pink of blood. This was the battle he knew he would have to take part in. He hadn't even known that dead cats could bleed this much.

Darkstripe began to follow the stream where it dipped down the hill, into a slight copse of willow trees that dipped over the bank, roots just barely managing to break through the soft earth to greedily suck up the water as it flowed by. The only sound left was the stream. The birds, it seemed, and every living creature that hadn't been hunted down under merciless claws had fled anyway, off to find safer grounds. He only wished he could follow their path.

A Dark Forest warrior bounded past him, white and gray pelt a blur as he ran. Thistleclaw. It was then that he spotted the body, waterlogged in between two boulders barely peeking out of the water. He felt the bile rising in his throat when he saw the blood bubbling at the throat of the dark pelted body, because it was Dustpelt and he had mentored him, had raised him to be a warrior and then turned around and betrayed him.

_I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so sorry-_

"Darkstripe! What are you mooning over? Everyone is gathering in the clearing," Thistleclaw called, voice muffled around a mouthful of dark tabby fur as he heaved Dustpelt's body up onto the grassy shore. He finds himself averting his eyes, casting them down to the ground when Thistleclaw's sharp amber gaze falls on him, cold and calculating. They called him a coward behind his back for a reason, he supposed.

He turned around, eyes still looking anywhere but the blood spattered across the grass, now unnervingly empty without the StarClan cats roaming across the fields and meadows and endless hills of thick forest. He can hear them still, as the Dark Forest cats crept up behind them and slaughtered them from behind, their joyful cries of a good day of hunting turning into horrified shrieks as they began to fade into the sky itself, disappearing forever into an afterlife that didn't exist twice. No one had questioned where they would go, or if they would just simply vanish into thin air, never to be seen again.

The stench of blood was strong in the air as he approached the clearing where most of the cats still alive were gathered. When he sees it, he nearly turns tail and runs as fast as he can in the opposite direction, because anywhere had to be better than seeing this.

A mountain of bodies has been stacked in the center of the field, small rivers of blood finding homes in the cracks between limbs. After so long, after he had watched countless pelts slashed open and bloodied fade into the sky, they had simply stopped disappearing. No one could explain it, yet perhaps the void the StarClan cats traveled to when they floated skyward for the second time was filled too quickly, and like a swollen stream bed, the ones left were left to the whims of the Dark Forest.

He could recognize countless cats he knew, so many of ThunderClan that it shook him to the core. And at the top, like a statue carved from the stars themselves, perched Tigerstar, standing proud and tall with his amber gaze glowing like he had knocked the sun itself out of the sky. Mapleshade crouched low at his side, a slender shadow of ragged fur and thorn-sharp claws.

This wasn't how it was supposed to be.

Burning amber eyes fall on him, and he can't bring himself to meet Tigerstar's gaze. For the second time he finds himself turning tail to the sight, looking anywhere but directly into the judgement he can't face. It's like Tigerstar can see inside him, he always has, and whenever those eyes fall upon him he's reduced into a shivering mass of nothing with only bones to hold his lifeless body up.

It's his fault this is happening.

When he turns he makes out the shape, small and slender, standing at the edge of the cliff not far from the clearing. But the sight that twists his heart more is the stars behind her, falling in a beautiful yet disgusting way, he thinks.

He's beside her, Blossomfall, he realizes, before he recognizes that he's made the conscious decision to move. She's deathly silent, hardly moving except for the barely there rise and fall of her chest as she breathes. During the battle, the living one, that is, she was one of the Clan warriors that sided with the Dark Forest and killed her own Clanmates, although it's no longer his place to judge when he's done the same thing.

"It's called a meteor shower, like the stars are dying."

He flinches at the sound of her voice, so cold it almost sounds like she's detached from the outside world. He can't find the heart to respond, and instead follows her gaze to where it's locked on the myriad of stars leaving sparkling trails across the night black sky.

"It's terrible, isn't it? The most terrible place there is," she says quietly, eyes on the horizon.

"The Dark Forest is nothing but shadows and the darkest crevices of the mind. It wasn't designed to be pretty," he responds, more harshly than he intends to and this time it's Blossomfall who flinches.

"No, here. StarClan, that is. When you were a kit did you not imagine coming up here one day and hunting among the stars, watching over those you loved for the rest of eternity? Now look at it, fallen to ruins, and a twisted sort of reality only exists in its place."

She was surprisingly wise for one so young; could see through him like he was the one fading instead of the others.

"They told me about the past sometimes, when I was younger. About you and what you did. Well, Longtail did at least. He said he was your friend."

He is, he though bitterly, but maybe that too was lost in the past, because he had seen Longtail's body, restored to youth and sight in that pile, and his friend had died a second death while he remained. He said nothing to her in return; too afraid to meet the leaf-green gaze that now stared at him, too afraid to see the disappointment written across her face like everyone else who met him.

He can't begin to understand why she's still here and why she hasn't left him like everyone else does. She has Clanmates here, living ones like Birchfall and Mousewhisker who saved themselves rather than be loyal.

"They made me kill my sister to prove myself. Tigerstar gave me a choice. Briarlight couldn't escape anyway – ThunderClan was beyond saving the crippled by that point. So he told me to make a choice, and I did. He held down my father by the neck and made him watch while I slit my sister's throat."

He snaps his gaze to her and she's shaking now, voice cracking and it's like he can see the walls she's spent so long building up shattering into fragments.

"I hate him," is all he manages to get out, and her tear-filled eyes follow him as he turns back to the clearing.

Darkstripe has no trouble picking out Tigerstar, a little lower on the pile of bodies now, barking instructions at a group of cats he barely recognizes. He crosses over to them, desperately trying to stop his limbs from trembling beneath him.

"Ah, Darkstripe. Finally decided to make yourself useful?" Tigerstar has the gall to laugh, and a few other cats around him follow suit. When Darkstripe says nothing in reply he can visibly see Tigerstar's eyes narrow, and the crowd around them goes silent.

"Not surprising that you've got nothing to say. You've always been a co-"

He's made his choice.

"Darkstripe, _don't!_"

He leaps.

All he hears is Blossomfall's bloodcurdling scream as he crashes into Tigerstar's side, a coiled mass of what feels like a rock wall as they go tumbling down the pile, a whirlwind of bared teeth and snarls, sending random bodies flying as they hit the ground, _hard_. Within seconds he's pinned to the ground, a huge paw pressing down on his windpipe while the other three cage him in.

"Who do you think you are?" Tigerstar snarls, and now there are reinforcements pressing in from all sides, repeating the words in guttural growls.

He can't come up with an explanation, but he never has. He's never had a single defining trait, or even one that could begin to unravel what always went on in his head. He shudders around the paw continuously pressing down on his throat, and he slowly turns his head, finding Blossomfall in the crowd, who's standing shock-still with her eyes blown wide.

"Why don't you ask yourself that question?"

He sees Tigerstar's eyes widen the slightest bit, and for a brief second he swears he sees betrayal flicker in their depths but it's gone moments later, replaced by unrepressed hatred that's been there since the beginning.

"Just know that wherever you end up, it's where you've belonged since birth," Tigerstar replies, and he sees the quickest baring of fangs before they wrap around his throat and then it's impossible to think, when your lifeblood is spilling out and marking the ground beneath in an ugly shade of scarlet.

The pressure on his throat releases but everything's fading, white spots threatening to cave the edges of his vision in as he releases one last sickening gurgle.

For the first time in years, he meets Tigerstar's eyes.

* * *

He was falling, spiraling into an endless abyss of darkness and a freezing, unbearable cold that seemed to leech its way deep under his pelt and encase his heart in lock and chain with the key thrown into the chasm he was twisting through. He couldn't tell if the terror running through his veins burned or freezed more; simultaneously he could feel the force of a thousand freezing rains and ice storms and roaring blazes tearing through his body, so similar to the one that destroyed ThunderClan - no, his clan, because it was, it always was and no one, not even StarClan could take that away from him.

But he was fading, plummeting into the silence, ceasing to exist – he never had, really – not standing next to Longtail so many years ago under the shadow of the Great Rock and not next to Hawkfrost in a forest filled with nothing but darkness, not fighting against Thistleclaw or standing at Tigerstar's shoulder on a battlefield. He was overlooked, put aside, forgotten about. Isn't that why he did the things he did? All to get somewhere, to find a purpose and be one of those stars hovering above the living heads of those he once knew, watching, not falling like the ones he had seen earlier, leaving a trail of crackling fire across the sky before disappearing over the horizon forever.

He couldn't see the light anymore that he had started falling from; all around him was a void, an endless land of black and silence, a deathly sort of lack-sound that made his ears ring, and he was descending still, entering a place of nothingness.

He never hit the bottom.

* * *

Part two to a tragic story. Though, Darkstripe's always was, in my opinion. I have a weird, twisted affection for him and couldn't let him die a coward. Well, at least not a full one.

Reviews are love.

- Rowan


End file.
